Have you guys been keeping track of Ignite? Such an invigorating concept: give a sharp-minded, silver-tongued, unabashedly geeky speaker five minutes on stage to present a “speedy presentation” on a topic of their choosing. Said speaker gets 20 slides which rotate automatically after 15 seconds. “Enlighten us, but make it quick” is the motto.

Stage fright… well that’s something you just have to overcome. You can do it the hard way by speaking audiences so many times that you hate yourself so much you get indifferent. You hate yourself after a failed speech, right? Well, you haven’t suffered enough!

But there is an alternative: Get on a stage, do a five second silence to build anticipation (it is the optimum time) and then pull your pants down or something the like. Right after that, you will actually notice that nothing has happened, that it is really not so bad to make an ass out of yourself. After that, speaking for audiences is a push over. It’ll take only one minute of precious ignite time, and you will have four minutes left to speak about anything you want.

Thanks @KK. For my next Ignite talk I’m planning to role-play a compulsive liar I used to know. His need to top anybody else’s story (no matter what the story was) was belligerent bordering on the violent. I’m figuring that type of madness might serve me well.

I dig the open-mic-y-ness of Ignite. I can’t think of another easy opportunity to bomb in front of 750 people. It’s a pretty damn good self-knowledge exercise. And the talks that rock, rock!